Problem Addressed and Newsworthiness of our Feature

Brand sponsorships play a crucial role in major sports events such as the Olympics, F1, World Cup, and Superbowl  and without the funding of millions of dollars by multinationals these events cannot take place. Brands spend millions of dollars for the exclusivity to be the ONLY brand in a category. The goal of sponsorships is to form brand association with the event and ultimately boost revenue.

However today, social media threatens this traditional model of sports sponsorship. Since the last Olympics (Beijing), Facebook has grown 9 times bigger and twitter has 494 million more users therefore it is no doubt that social media is the big business and a game changer. Through social media brands can find ways to make a presence during these events (ethically or unethically) and therefore create audience awareness.

With 80, 000 tweets being tweeted per minute around Usain Bolt’s victory in Olympics this year arguably leads to sponsorship firms becoming more interested in number of followers than victory. This raises the question whether spending up to 100 million dollars for a sponsorship is worth it, if 100% exclusivity for the brand is not guaranteed. 

Are sport events too saturated with sponsors now that it takes away from the purity of the game?

Social media platforms such as twitter and Facebook has created structures for communication, twitter for more fast breaking news and Facebook for communication.

Social media reporters are now replacing sideline reporters. Blogs are replacing newspapers.

Sports sponsorship are now venturing into social media and companies are constantly looking to for ways to get their name out there and are now ‘forced’ to change their business models to adapt to the new emerging business environment. Organizations must find a way to co – exist with sport events and sponsorship.

The reading from week 2 ; Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable by  Clay Shirky (2009) (http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ )is particularly relevant to our feature because it highlights the newsworthiness of the topic. Shirky argues that Instead of resisting and trying hard to preserve the current institutions (like newspapers) we must embrace the changing business models and be open to find not a replacement but something new and different that will improve our society. This means that other institutions including sport’s industry must tackle and embrace the rising power of social media.

He states,  “it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it” (Shirky, 2009). The emergence of the printing press in the 1400-1500 was an era of uncertainty and experimentation. What was unclear at that time is clear now because the revolution led to the establishment of newspaper organizations. Much like that era we are again living in a paradigm shift and we are anticipating how social media will change the traditional business model of democratic journalism .